


No Home in Heaven

by Parda



Series: Blood Cousins [7]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, The Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-09 07:17:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12271563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Parda/pseuds/Parda
Summary: Michael casts Castiel out of heaven, Sam and Dean are drawn into the apocalypse, Ruth gets the weapon she needs to kill angels, Gabriel makes the ultimate sacrifice, and Castiel wants revenge.- Set during the end of Season 5 (Point of No Return, Hammer of the Gods, The Devil You Know, and Two Minutes to Midnight)





	1. Cast Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the vast halls of heaven, where screams have no echo, Castiel undergoes discipline at Michael's command.

**= The Well of Heaven =**

Michael summons the subjects of Heaven, and they obey. Angels of all forms gather in their ordered choirs. They hover in a great sphere—fiery seraphim with six wings, fierce cherubim of four faces, ophanim with their eyes on the rim of their outer wheel, and the hashmallim with a single pair of wings. At the center of the sphere lies the Well of Heaven, a deep darkness, a hole that cannot be filled.

“We are gathered,” Michael announces when all have arrived.

“We are gathered,” the choirs of Heaven reply in their tens of thousands, and it as if a mighty wind has rippled across an ocean, raising waves that crash upon a distant shore.

“We touch each other, wingtip to wingtip,” Michael proclaimed. “Our fires mingle, we see each other clearly. We taste each other’s minds. We know the truth of each others’ words.”

“We know the truth,” the angels echoes, and it is as if a bonfire has flared, spending golden sparks into blackness.

“Let the conclave be bound,” Michael calls, and Raphael flies with two swords held wide, circling the outside of the sphere, shifting a little each time, weaving a net of silver fire from the tip of each sword. Raphael reaches the place left open for it, directly across the sphere from Michael, then draws the tips of the two swords together to complete the net of fire and close the door.

“The conclave is begun,” Michael, for now the sphere is consecrated. The net cannot be broken, and no angel may leave until the conclave is done. “We are gathered,” Michael tells them, “to honor our comrades who are gone. Gazardiel! Call the names.”

Gazardiel moves toward the center, closer to the Well, accompanied by four hashmallim. “I call the name Yahoel,” Gazardiel calls out, “destroyer of idolaters, guard against the Leviathan, fierce defender of the faith. We taste your essence. We honor you. We bid you farewell.”

“Farewell,” the thousands echo, and one of the hashmallim opens wide its wings, releasing a bright mist, the grace of Yahoel now unbound. The mist wavers and twists, but moves inexorably toward the Well, slowly at first then faster, circling that darkness. The mist begins to spin, winding itself around itself, forming a globe. The brightness increases, becomes a blaze, a brilliance that etches a line of fire in its wake, showing all the intricate pattern of the dance. The grace whirls, drawn to the Well, spiraling in, tighter and closer, faster and faster, then closer still. Thus it is gone, and only the darkness of the deep remains.

“Farewell,” the host of Heaven whispers; then silence reigns.

“I call the name Zachariah,” Gazardiel proclaims next. “Sentinel of Heaven, keeper of the fire, warrior of the sword. We taste your essence. We honor you. We bid you farewell.” And again the host bids a comrade farewell, another hasmall opens its wings, and another grace blazes in beauty then disappears into the Well.

Two more names follow: Paschar, lover of beauty, guardian of the veil, seeker of dream; and Nemamiah, arbiter of justice, protector of innocents. As each hashmall opens its wings, the angels watch in silence as yet another shining grace spirals away into darkness.

“Farewell,” they call softly, and Michael whispers the word yet again. Gazardiel and the hashmallim return to their places, and the paean of praise and farewell rings forth, a tribute to those who are gone.

Silence follows, and it grows, until hashmallim begin to exchange glances and even cherubim rustle their wings. Finally, Michael moves forward, and instantly all is still again. “In this place of endings,” Michael begins, “we have bidden our comrades farewell. So we have done in ages past; so we will do in ages to come.” The archangel sweeps its gaze across the subjects of Heaven, tasting the essence of each one: their sorrow, their patient solemnity, their curiosity, their rage. “We mourn together, and we will mourn alone.

“Yet now we are gathered, in solemn conclave,” Michael proclaims, “to pronounce judgment on the one who is responsible for the deaths of our four companions: the angel Castiel.”

Michael returns to its space, and after a respectful time of silence, Haamiah moves forward, both wings spread wide and flames yellow glimmers, a posture of humble questioning. “Do you summon this angel for instruction?”

At a gesture from Michael, the ophan Rehael, inspirer of respect and obedience, responds. “Castiel has been our disciple,” Rehael informs the gathering. “Twice.” Wings flutter in agitation, and wheels spin faster. Some hide their eyes. “The discipline,” Rehael continues grimly, “did not hold.”

Raphael speaks next. “Castiel has come between me and a prophet.” The tiers of angels murmur in dismay. “Castiel has disobeyed direct orders,” Raphael continues. “Castiel has suborned a chosen vessel. This angel has shared Heaven’s information with humans, including the banishment sigil, and has interfered in the divine plan. Castiel has killed fellow angels.”

Sandalphon, a prince among the seraphim, is driven to exclaim, “Castiel has rebelled!”

Ripples of shock spread wide, for such a charge has not been leveled since Lucifer was cast down. Then Tabbris comes forward, the inner wheel spinning and the fires glowing orange. Michael and Raphael prepare themselves, for this ophan is the guardian of honesty and the arbiter of cause. “I have heard, Raphael,” Tabbris begins with delicate politeness, “that you disintegrated Castiel. Is this true?”

“This is true.”

“Yet Castiel lives again.” The ophan’s many eyes are bright, its voice still careful and calm. “I have also heard that Castiel says our Father is the one who restored him to life.”

The host bursts into an excited babble, cherubim turning to cherubim in wonder and hashmallim chattering, until Raphael moves forward and touches the two swords together, so that a bolt of lightning slashes across the sphere. “So Castiel says,” Raphael replies, each word dripping disdain. “But the Fallen One brought back Castiel.”

Mention of their Father had brought excitement; mention of their enemy brings utter silence. Michael watches, looking for those who might betray, then remembering their names. They would be dealt with soon.

“So you say,” Tabbris says to Raphael. The politeness is complete; Tabbris merely states the obvious. “We have no evidence either way.”

All six of Raphael’s wings begin to flare outward, but Sandalphon speaks, saying, “We do. We know the Fallen One is released from the cage. We know he encourages disobedience, just as we know our Father would never reward such behavior.”

“This is true,” Tabbris admits. “But is Castiel working with the Fallen One, or is Castiel an unwitting puppet?”

“Does that matter?” asks a cherub from its eagle face. “Castiel has disobeyed. From what Raphael says, Castiel has allied himself with humans.” Its lion face growls, “Castiel stands with them, instead of with us. This angel’s allegiance is no longer to Heaven.”

Sandalphon comes forward, wonderfully beautiful and immensely tall, and slowly says what is in all their minds: “Castiel is a servant of the Lord no more.”

Michael and Raphael wait for dissension, for disagreement, for any murmurs of dismay. But all are silent, and many thousands of eyes are unblinking and calm. Raphael lifts the swords and points both tips at the Well to say, “I call for Castiel to be cast out!”

Cast out, runs the whisper, and thousands of feathers shiver at the words. Cast out, runs the wind, and a few flames nearly die. Cast out, runs the hissing, and some hashmallim close their eyes. Cast out.

Even Lucifer was only cast down.

But still no one speaks in Castiel’s favor, and soon the subjects of Heaven become quiet, serene in their righteousness. Tabbris, the arbiter of cause, speaks for them all: “Castiel must be cast out.”

Michael briefly shutters all six wings then spreads them wide. “I accept the judgment of the conclave,” Michael says humbly, for the throne of Heaven is empty and Michael is regent only, not ruler. “It shall be so.”

Raphael uses a sword to trace a circle in the air, opening a doorway within the veil. A hashmall reaches in and pulls out a tiny figure by the nape of the neck. Its arms and legs dangle; it has no wings. Castiel is still in human form, a shocking obscenity at an angel conclave.

The doorway closes, and Michael turns to the four angels whom Castiel had defeated and betrayed. “Strip Castiel’s vessel,” Michael orders. “Then bring it forward.”

The angels move with swift eagerness, even glee, and Castiel’s garments are torn away. Each angel takes a limb, and the vessel writhes in their grip as they haul with brutal indifference, so that the arms and legs are first twisted, then stretched wide. Smears of blood both old and fresh mark the torso; the cuts of the banishment sigil are carved deep in the skin. Amid the dark patch of hair between its legs dangle dirty pink genitals, a blatant reminder that humans are born with blood and pain, not created from grace and glory. The vessel’s lips are bloody. His eyes are fiercely aware.

“Castiel, the Shield of El,” Michael begins, “you are no longer worthy of that name. You have broken your oath of fealty to God and his angels. You have chosen humans over Heaven. This conclave has agreed: you are to be cast out.”

The naked bloody figure jerks and struggles, his eyes wide and his mouth open, making frantic noises that the watching choirs of angels disregard. They have witnessed human suffering before, and angelic compassion allows no sentiment.

The cherub Rashnu comes forward, holding a thin golden rod. A hashmall follows close behind. The four angels tighten their grip and pull, so that Castiel is stretched between them, unable to move, face down. His head tosses back and forth until Rashnu orders, “Hold it,” and the hashmall clamps the head between its hands and keeps it still.

The end of the rod is a sharpened hook, and Rashnu uses the tip to slit open the nape of the neck and peel back flaps of skin, revealing yellowish-white neck bones. The hook slides easily up into the skull, and with a careful twist, it latches onto Castiel’s grace. Slowly, Rashnu removes the hook, and it draws with it a silver cord. Rashnu twirls the golden rod, drawing forth more silver cord, spinning living grace into twisted thread.

Castiel spasms and jerks, even with the angels holding him still. His words have become screams, and his lips are bitten through. His fingers and toes begin to contract into claws with bone cracking force, then hang limp and useless. It is as if his entire network of nerves is being drawn out through his spine, scraping its way along muscle and bone. The limbs are next, and then the torso. The grace is thicker now, more like yarn than thread, and the rod is nearly full. Rashnu gives a final twirl, until the cord of grace is stretched and quivering, tethered to the vessel only at the heart.

Castiel is twitching all over. His fingers and toes are crooked and broken, like clusters of bent twigs, and he no longer has the strength to scream. His head hangs limply, and his eyes have closed.

Michael grabs a handful of hair and yanks the head up and back, commanding, “Open your eyes.”

The bloody lips twitch then part to reveal bloody teeth. The eyes stay closed. “Don’t you know?” Castiel manages to whispers. The vessel is panting, trying to breathe, and the words come out slow. “I don’t follow … your orders … anymore.”

It is only then that Michael realizes Castiel is smiling. Michael pulls the head back even farther, exposing the throat, stretching tight the skin, making it hard to breathe. Blood pulses there, the veins and arteries fragile and delicate, so easy to shred. Only now do the eyelids flutter and then lift.  Michael looks into the vessel’s eyes, with their layering of white and blue around dark holes and streaks of red like bloody lightning. “I do know,” Michael says with gentle viciousness. “That is why you are here.” Michael leans closer, so that angel fire licks at Castiel’s skin. The vessel tastes of pain and rage and defiance, a sour salty tang, bitter and disgusting. “You love these humans so much,” Michael hisses, “go live with them. Then die with them.”

Michael lets go of the hair and lifts a sword, then saws through the silver cord. The cut is just at the surface of the skin, severing the grace and breaking the link between heaven and this … creature, no longer an angel, no longer a man.

The four angels let go and move back as the vessel convulses, naked and bloody and broken, then finally shudders and goes still. His eyes are glazed, and his breathing is ragged, but he is aware.

Rashnu hands the rod with twisted grace to Michael, who holds it high and proclaims, “Castiel is an angel no more, being without grace and without name. This vessel has no place here; we cast it out.”

“We cast it out!” the watching thousands reply, and it is as thunder in the sky.

Again Michael searches their faces, looking for those who show regret or sympathy, who might be moved by this punishment to rebel. The names are noted; they will need watching.

Michael unwinds a length of the silver cord. The tip wavers at first, seeking, until it is drawn to the Well and the line stretches taut. Michael holds the rod level between outstretched hands so that it unwinds on its own, more and more quickly, as the grace is pulled down. Finally, the cord is completely unwound, and the rod is empty.

The free end of the cord whiplashes about, striking Michael’s hand before settling into a spin, tracing a whirlpool over the Well. It grows smaller quickly, until the grace that was Castiel disappears into the deep darkness, the hole that cannot be filled.

“We cast it out,” Michael says quietly, and the angels say nothing in return. The Outcast closes his eyes. “This conclave is concluded,” Michael says. “Raphael, open the gates.”

As Raphael slices open the net and the angels stream away, Michael turns back to Raphnu. The cherub has closed the flaps of skin and healed the neck wound and the broken bones. Raphnu tells Michael quietly, “The vessel will survive. It has just enough grace inside it to make up for the lack of a soul.” Raphnu takes back the golden rod and departs.

“I want the Outcast alive to watch the Apocalypse,” Michael warns the four angels who had lost to Castiel, thus failing in their task to guard the vessel Adam. “When you are finished,” Michael instructs, “leave the vessel on Earth somewhere.”

“Yes, Michael,” they say, sweeping back wings and dimming flames, though a flare of gleeful anticipation breaks through.

Pleasure should never be pure. By name Michael summons them: “Zuphlas. Jamareah. Sraosha. Orifiel.” They open themselves to him, bound by their naming, and he orders: “Afterwards, each of you will report to Rehael. For discipline.” That Adam is securely in Heaven now makes no difference; Zachariah and Yahoel are dead, and these angels have failed.

“But—,” Sraosha begins then quickly covers all of its eyes with its wings and shutters its flames.

The other three angels had moved away slightly, and they were crouched in the same posture of obeisance. “Yes, Michael,” all four angels chorus, obeying Heaven’s will, as all angels must do, or else risk Heaven’s wrath.

Michael spreads all six wings and flies away, up to the vault of Heaven, its vast blackness sparkling with stars. Below is a blue planet, veiled in white clouds, dragging the weight of its dead moon with it on its yearly circular journey around a yellow star.

After a time, Raphael appears. “That went well.”

“Yes,” Michael agrees. “Just as we planned.” It had been necessary to set an example. It had been gratifying to take that rebellious angel apart. “Yet larger plans go awry. The Fallen One has been walking on Earth for nearly a year.”

“But not in its true vessel,” Raphael points out, but Michael is staring at the planet with a stillness that is frustration instead of proper angelic serenity, so Raphael suggests, “You could use Ruth, temporarily.”

“Ruth will be as tainted as her brother.” Nor is she likely to say yes, Michael knows, not after their conversation in her dream. “Adam will be ready soon. They are reconstituting his body again, and then the preparation will begin.”

It would not be difficult. That bloodline has been bred for hundreds of generations, refined and strengthened time and again, all to culminate in the true vessels of Dean and Sam. Those two can contain an archangel, just as they are. Their close kin need only a drop of archangel blood in infancy to prepare them to do the same.

And so, for centuries, all the infants in that line had been so prepared. An angel had descended, carrying a vial of Michael’s blood, and placed a drop upon each baby’s tongue. The Fallen One had perverted this ritual and made of a mockery of the sacred bond, feeding Sam Winchester demon blood instead, polluting that vessel forever. Ruth and Nathan had been prepared; the angel Anahita had done its job and given them archangel blood.

But the blood had not been Michael’s.

The sacred blood made vessels strong, but strong enough to contain an archangel also meant strong enough to rebel. Michael had had to abandon Nathan, defeated by that puny human’s will.

It was not Lucifer’s blood, for nothing could pass through that cage. Gabriel might have done it, just for spite or for amusement, but that is unlikely.

Which left Raphael.

Raphael, the quiet one. Always helpful, always supportive, always watching. Never in command. Perhaps Raphael has grown weary of that role. Perhaps some hidden plan has not gone awry? Michael knows that rebellion takes many forms.

“Odd, that the vessels already prepared should not be suitable,” Raphael observes.

“Yes,” Michael agrees again, resolving to watch this angel more closely and, if necessary, to kill its female vessel. The male vessel, broken as it was, could never consent to anyone again. “Odd.”

* * *

 

_Next Chapter: After killing Zachariah and losing their brother Adam, Dean and Sam drive to Bobby's for some R &R._


	2. Broken Blade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean leaves Ruth unsatisfied

### Sunday, 21 March 2010 – Sioux Falls, South Dakota

Bobby’s personal phone rang on Sunday morning. He’d left it on his desk, and he was in the kitchen next to his bank of other phones on the wall, so he didn’t get to it until the fifth ring.

“Morning, Bobby,” said Sam’s voice.

“Morning, Sam.” Bobby wheeled himself one-handed back into the kitchen, going a little crooked but getting through the door. “How’s the drive from California?”

“Getting flatter. We just crossed into Nebraska. We should get to your place around dark.”

“Good,” Bobby said then told him, “Ruth’s staying here this weekend. She showed up on Friday night, after some weird dreams about four angels getting knifed. I told her what I could about you and Dean and Castiel trying to get your very-recently-dead brother Adam away from Michael, but she’s still got some questions.”

“I bet,” Sam said. He sounded tired.

“Ask Bobby if he’s heard from Cas,” came Dean’s voice, cutting through distance and engine noise and wind.

Sam started, “Dean said to ask—”

“Yeah, I heard him,” Bobby broke in. “The answer’s ‘no’. Nothing from Adam, either. You?”

“Nothing.” There was more engine noise and wind and then some silence, until Sam said, “See you tonight, Bobby.”

“Come hungry,” Bobby said. “Ruth’s in town right now buying food.”

“That’ll be good,” Sam said, while Dean called out, “Tell her I like pie!”

Bobby shook his head in fond exasperation. That boy…

“Thanks, Bobby,” Sam said. “And tell Ruth thanks, too. We’ll see you tonight.”

The boys showed up around seven, driving a truck they’d gotten from God knows where. They said hello then dug into the chili and cornbread and lasagna (one vegetarian and one meat) like there was no tomorrow. And maybe there wouldn’t be. Bobby ate hearty, too. There was still plenty left over; Ruth and Bobby had been cooking all day.

“Damn,” Dean said in appreciation when Ruth brought out dessert. “Home-made pie.” He smiled up at her, a real enough smile but still with a bunch of flirt thrown in.

Bobby wasn’t sure Dean even realized; hitting on women was such a habit with him. Ruth seemed to know that; she smiled back at Dean but added an half-amused half-exasperated shake of her head. Bobby knew that feeling well. She handed Bobby the pie server, and he cut generous slices for everybody.

As a true pie connoisseur, Dean closed his eyes for the first bite. “Wow,” he said, and this time his smile was pure pleasure. “This is awesome. What is it?”

Ruth’s piece was already half gone. “Chocolate mocha chiffon.”

“Coffee and chocolate and pie, all in one bite.” Dean shook his head and grinned at his plate. “Trifecta perfecta pie.”

Sam made some muffled noise of agreement, and Bobby joined in as best he could with his mouth full. There was a crust that kind of melted away on your tongue, leaving a smooth silky chocolate that wasn’t too sweet or too gooey, all topped with real whipped cream (none of that squirt stuff from a can) and bittersweet chocolate shavings.

Bobby didn’t think that mocha latte cappuccino foamy crap qualified as coffee, not by a long shot, but it made a damn good pie. “Another one of your grandmother’s recipes?” Bobby asked.

“No,” Ruth said, “Eli’s mom taught me how to make it.”

“Who’s Eli?” Sam asked.

Ruth’s fork halted briefly in midair before she said, “My husband.”

“Oh,” Sam said blankly just as Dean asked, “No shit?”

Bobby had thought that, too, but at least he hadn’t said it. Ruth didn’t wear a wedding ring, and except for her brother and her folks, she’d never mentioned anybody. “Is he in Iraq?” Bobby asked.

“No.” She set her fork down carefully on the side of her plate then looked up to say, “He was buried at Arlington three years ago.”

Now it was Dean’s turn for a blank, “Oh,” while Bobby muttered, “Shit.” Dean added a sincere, if kind of awkward, “Sorry,” and Sam did, too.

Ruth gave an embarrassed half-smile, half-shrug with a murmur of thanks. She turned to Bobby to explain, “It’s not something I like to bring up.”

“Yeah, sure,” Bobby said right away. He didn’t talk about Karen. Sam hardly ever mentioned Madison or Jess. People treated you funny when they knew. “We understand,” Bobby told her, and the boys nodded and agreed.

“More pie?” Ruth suggested, not exactly cheerful, but reassuringly matter-of-fact and calm, which Bobby appreciated. “The other one is coconut cream.”

“Great!” Bobby said, making it sound hearty. “I love coconut.”

 

* * *

 

Ruth took her time getting the pie, giving herself a chance to regroup. She hadn’t meant to mention Eli at all. It got awkward. They guys were quiet when she got back to the table, but they were sneaking glances at her, so she gave them the basics. “His name was Eli Kinsey. He was from Nevada, and he liked basketball and trains. I was twenty-three when we got married, he was twenty-five. He was killed by sniper fire in Fallujah a little over a year later.”

That left out nearly everything important about Eli: his beautiful laugh and his dark brown eyes, the way he looked about five years old when he grinned, and his deep voice that made her shiver with desire. He played the trumpet and he loved to dance. They’d talked of going to New Zealand for a real honeymoon and planned on buying a house someday. But Ruth didn’t want to bore the guys, and Sam and Dean had a lot going on in their lives. “Anything else you’d like to know?” she asked.

Sam and Dean just kind of looked at each other, and Bobby answered for them all. “Uh… no, I guess not. Not right now.”

“Sure, whenever,” she said then added, “Really,” to make sure they knew that door was open. “I don’t mind talking about Eli if people already know,” she explained. “But it gets weird once you tell people you’re a widow.”

“Or an orphan,” Dean added, half under his breath, and then cut himself another piece of the chocolate pie.

Yesterday, Bobby had told Ruth about how Sam and Dean’s mom had died, split open and pinned like a butterfly to the ceiling. Then Bobby had explained why. Ruth didn’t think anybody wanted to talk about that, either.

“So,” Sam said, with that fake kind of cheeriness people use to move past awkward moments, “how’s the research going?”

Bobby talked some about a Zoroastrian prophecy of a momentous battle between light and dark, and Ruth told a story she’d heard about the archangel Gabriel and the prophet Mohammed. After both pies were half gone, they gathered in the library. Bobby wheeled his chair behind his desk, his usual place, while Dean and Sam leaned against walls then half stood, half sat on chairs, and kept moving around. Ruth didn’t blame them; they’d been sitting in a car for the last two days.

Ruth took one of the chairs next to Bobby’s desk and finally got to ask the question that had been beating insider her head for the last two days: “Can I see one of those angel blades?”

Sam and Dean exchanged a look, then Dean pulled a blade from his sleeve and laid it on the desk. In her dream the blade had been dripping and red, but now the silver glowed under the electric lights, and the cutting edge showed a faint golden line. Dean had cleaned it well after his kill.

She picked it up, expecting it to be heavy from what Bobby had said, but it was so well-balanced it felt almost light in her hand. It was symmetric, which would help with throwing, and a comfortable size. The grooved handle was about eight inches long, the blade about twelve. Both sides of the blade were sharp, which made this a dagger instead of a knife, and the fuller ran from near the tip to just above the handle. It seemed all of a piece, the handle and the blade the same material, as if it had been made in a mold.

“What are they made of?” she asked, but the brothers just shrugged. “Did it get hot?” she asked Dean, wondering if she should wrap the handle. “When you stabbed Zachariah and he exploded in white fire?”

“No,” Dean said. “I wasn’t hot, either, and I was standing right in front of the son of a bitch. It’s a cold fire.”

Weird. But that all this angel stuff was weird. “I’d like to keep this blade,” she said.

But Dean shook his head and said, “No. And no matter how much pie you butter me up with, the answer will still be no.”

Arrogant bastard. He wasn’t why she’d spent the day in the kitchen. Her hand tightened on the knife grip even as she silently repeated Sergeant Zimsky’ advice: Stay calm. “You have three—”

“We have one,” Dean broke in. “Castiel’s knife shattered, and Sam’s got taken when Michael beamed the room—and Adam—up to heaven.” Dean nodded at the weapon in her hand. “So that’s it.” He looked directly at Ruth to say, “And that’s mine.”

She didn’t answer, and she didn’t let go. And she didn’t look away. Dean’s green eyes had narrowed just a bit, totally focused on her, but without any trace of flirtation on his improbably handsome face. He was going for the “intense and serious, hovering just on the edge of massive pissed-off-edness” look to try to push her into giving in. Ruth didn’t push that easy. “I need a blade,” Ruth said.

“Why?” Dean asked her, straight out and simple. “To kill Michael?”

That was the simple answer. “He needs to be stopped.”

“And just how do you plan to do that?” Dean asked next.

Ruth knew it wouldn’t be easy, but she had some ideas, and Dean had proved it was possible. “You killed Zachariah,” she pointed out.

“Because I was freaking lucky,” Dean told her. “I got Zachariah so pissed off at me that he wasn’t paying attention, and I was close enough to kill him. But like I said, I was lucky.” Dean was up now, pacing back and forth in front of Bobby’s desk. “Zachariah threw Sam against the wall, and he didn’t even touch to him do it. I hit Cas once and damn near broke every bone in my hand. And they’re just normal angels.”

Dean stopped right in front of her to say, “So you don’t have a fucking prayer of getting close enough and being fast enough to hurt an archangel.”

Ruth stood up slowly, the blade still in her hand, and took a step to the side of the chair, not backing up, but giving both of them room to move. “Then neither do you.”

“Probably not,” Dean agreed, biting out the words. “But I know what I’m getting into. And you don’t. Because when Michael comes to Earth, he’s going to be in a vessel. Somebody’s body. A person. And let me tell you, killing somebody with a knife is messy work.” He jerked his chin at the knife. “Do you really think you can stab somebody with that?”

Ruth gritted her teeth then let that turn into a smile. “Right now, I could sure stab you.” Dean didn’t blink. He probably thought she was joking.

“Can you kill Adam,” Dean asked next, “a nineteen-year-old kid?”

She’d killed people younger than that, even if she had used a gun instead of a knife.

Dean moved in, close enough that she could have lifted a hand and touched him, close enough so that his breath stirred her hair. Then he asked, each word quiet and hard, “If Michael takes Nathan as his vessel again, can you kill your brother?”

Ruth had a counter for that one, because it was a lot more likely that Lucifer would take Sam. “Can you kill yours?” she demanded.

For one unguarded instant, Dean’s eyes were anguished, and his face twisted in an odd mix of frustration and determination. Then he was in control again, but Ruth wished she had never asked the question, because Dean has obviously been asking himself that for a while, and his answer was yes.

“Yes,” Sam said, coming forward to stand beside his brother, “he can. Because someday, he may have to. Someday, maybe I’ll ask him to.”

“Sam—,” Dean began, his voice suspiciously husky.

“Or maybe he’ll ask me to kill him,” Sam went on, “if things go wrong. We take care of each other, no matter what. No matter how. Our dad taught us that, a long time ago.”

“It’s what hunters do for each other,” Bobby put in.

Ruth understood that. You didn’t hand the job off to a stranger; you took care of your own. Ruth had spent a lot of time staring at the life support unit in Nathan’s room, wondering if she’d have to pull the plug and watch her brother die. She wasn’t ready to do that. She wasn’t ready to stab him, either. She could kill Adam, and she could kill Dean, but she couldn’t kill her brother. Not like that.

Think it through, Sergeant Zimsky had always said, because being angry and doing something stupid is way too fucking easy. So stay calm and think it through. Then be smart.

“Here.” Ruth handed the knife to Dean, hilt first. “You’re right.”

He looked at her funny for a second before he took the blade, saying, “Glad you’re being so reasonable,” as he tucked the blade back inside his sleeve.

Ruth shrugged, even while she was trying to swallow bitter frustration and rage. “You had a lot of good reasons.” She still wanted to hit something—she wanted to hit Dean—so she took a deep breath and walked away.

In the kitchen, she got a pop from the fridge then stood at the sink and didn’t drink it. She had some thinking to do. After a few minutes, Bobby came to the doorway and sat there, watching her. She turned and asked him, “Want a beer?” He just shook his head and kept watching, concerned and quiet, the same way he watched Sam and Dean sometimes. “I’m OK,” she told Bobby, and he adjusted the tilt of his baseball hat before he wheeled his chair around.

She walked beside him as they went back into the library. Sam was reading at the desk, and Dean was staring out the window. “Hey, you said Castiel’s knife shattered,” she said to them. “Did you bring back the pieces?”

“Yeah, I picked ‘em up,” Sam said. “They’re in my bag.” He went into the hall then came back with a rolled up white cloth. He placed it on Bobby’s desk and carefully opened the cloth—a plain white t-shirt—to show a collection of jagged shards, a few as long as her hand, some smaller bits, and all razor sharp. Perfect.

“I’d like some of the shards,” she told them. “I know an engineer who could take a look, maybe figure out what it’s made of.”

“Yeah, sure,” Dean said. “Take ‘em all.” He rolled them back up and handed the bundle to her.

“Thanks, Dean,” she said, meaning it totally, trying to respond in kind to his peace offering.

Dean’s grin was crooked and well-practiced, but this time it was charming, because this time it was real. “You’re welcome.”


	3. Angelicide 101

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruth gets ambushed, and in the hospital Sheriff Jody Mills comes to her rescue

### 22 March 2010, Sioux Falls SD

Ruth packed her things and left Bobby’s early on Monday morning so she could go to Dayton to ask Hank for help with the shards from Castiel’s knife. Rain was falling, a gray spring drizzle, and the sky was gray, too. She went to Mass first, then filled up her car’s gas tank and grabbed coffee and a breakfast burrito at the Stop-N-Go. She’d gone only two miles out of town when she almost hit the girl.

“Damn it!” Ruth swore, slamming on the brakes and swerving so sharply she careered into a ditch. That girl had stepped right out in front of her, in the middle of the road. And now the car was stuck. Ruth was going to have to call for a tow. First, of course, she should check on the girl, who’d looked to be about fifteen years old, probably lost or maybe a runaway, out on her own on a rainy Monday morning.

Except...

This was a classic set up for an ambush. Ruth had seen enough in Iraq to know. That girl might be a demon or an angel or some other weird thing. In the car mirror, Ruth could see the girl approaching. Her blonde hair, darkened by rain, clung in lank strands to her skin.

 From the bag on the front seat, Ruth pulled out the white T-shirt, selected the largest shard, and used the shirt to make a handle of sorts. Her real knife was in her boot, but if the girl were human, she probably wouldn’t need it, and if the girl weren’t human, the makeshift dagger was a better bet.

Ruth got out and faced the girl, keeping the dagger hidden alongside her thigh, in case this was all perfectly normal. “Are you all right?” Ruth asked. “Do you need a ride?”

“No,” the girl said—calm and controlled, her face utterly still.

With that one word, Ruth knew it wasn’t a normal day. “Deus,” she called, checking for demon spawn.

The girl didn’t flinch or smile. “I am no demon,” she said, now standing about four paces away and blinking in the rain. “I am Sraosha, an angel of the Lord.”

“Uh-huh.” Ruth didn’t let go of her blade. “What do you want?”

“I need a vessel.”

“You’ve got one.”

“It is weak.” Sraosha looked down at the girl’s body with a grimace and took a step forward. “You are strong. Together, we would be stronger still.”

Not strong enough, Ruth knew, if she were as flawed as her brother.

“A war is coming,” Sraosha was saying. “It would be wise to be strong. For both of us.”

Ruth was pretty damn sure the angel didn’t care about her. “Why don’t you just stay in heaven, where you don’t need a vessel?”

“Heaven is ... complicated now.” Sraosha looked uncomfortable but said nothing more.

Angels, one of Bobby’s books had said, had a hard time telling lies. This one was trying to hide its reasons, but doing a damn poor job. Ruth had never expected to meet a heavenly draft dodger. Not that it mattered. She wouldn’t have said yes to Smedley Butler himself. “No. I will never be your vessel.”

“I see.” Sraosha twirled a lock of blonde hair around a finger as she stared at the bare tree branches across the road. “Then I shall have to kill yo—”

Ruth rushed the angel, knife at the ready for a stabbing thrust up into the heart. That split-second of speed and surprise let her get in close and stab, but not deep enough. Even wounded, the angel fought back with more strength than any fifteen-year-old girl could have. Ruth got cuffs to the head that set her ears ringing, and the rain made it hard to see, and the angel was screaming, but she held on to the angel’s arm with her right hand and stomped on a foot, all the while desperately holding onto the blood-slippery knife with her left hand, trying to shove it into the heart.

Another foot stomp, on the instep, and then Ruth hooked her foot behind the angel’s leg and yanked. The angel went down but grabbed Ruth and pulled, and they both ended up on the ground, with Ruth on top. For a breathless instant, they lay like lovers, close enough to kiss ... save for the knife embedded between them and their skin slick with blood.

Then the girl’s brown eyes began glow, white hot and smoking, and white fire oozed from the mouth and nose and ears. Ruth pushed off and away from the dying angel. A cold fire, Dean had called it, and Ruth was shuddering with cold and she was wet, too, but her skin felt hot and her hands were warm. Blood, she realized. All over her hands. All over her.

Blood seeping into the black charred wings etched on the pavement, already being washed away by the rain. Blood all over the dead body of the fifteen-year-old girl beside her.

The girl she had killed in order to kill the angel inside.

Like the cops were going to believe that.

Bobby, Ruth thought. She needed to call Bobby for help. He’d send the clean-up crew. Sam and Dean had done this sort of thing before. She had to call Bobby.

But her car with her phone seemed far away and her legs didn’t work. The rain didn’t wash away the blood on her shirt. Ruth plucked at the sodden fabric and uncovered a wound on her chest, where during the fight, the unwrapped “handle” of the knife had parted her skin and muscles and tissue, down to the bone.

“Holy Mother of God,” Ruth whispered, clamping down on the urge to vomit. She’d never liked to look at wounds. Especially her own. She pressed her hands down, trying to hold the gaping skin together. Her breathing was fine, at least her lungs and heart were ok.

But she felt cold and dizzy and the urge to vomit was back. Her body was going into shock. She put her head down, breathing deeply, and called, “Castiel,” then added a silent prayer.

He didn’t come, but soon after that, a cop did, his car pulling over on the side of the road. “Miss?” he asked. “Are you all right?”

“No,” Ruth said but didn’t answer any more questions, and when he saw the blood he let her be. Then there were voices and flashing lights and firm hands, and the world went gray and all she could hear was a siren screaming like an angel dying as it fell.

* * *

 

Ruth woke to bright lights and a soft bed in a windowless room and smells she knew too well. Hospital. Bandages. Pain. Though it wasn’t too bad; they must have loaded her with drugs. Then a nurse came by, and then a doctor, and then the police.

He introduced himself as Officer Janecki then pulled a chair over to her bed and sat down. He took out a pad of paper and a pen. “Can you tell me what happened?”

Ruth had her story ready. “The girl stepped out on the road. I swerved to avoid her and went into the ditch. When I got out of my car to see if she needed help, she attacked me.”

“Any idea why?”

“Drugs?” Ruth ventured. “She was talking crazy and seemed really strong.” That part was true.

“Did you know the victim?”

“The victim?” Ruth asked blankly.

He looked at her oddly before enunciating: “The dead girl?”

“Oh.” Ruth shook her head then wished she hadn’t. Her ears hurt, and her head ached. “Sorry. She attacked me, so she’s the—” Ruth stopped herself from saying enemy and instead used, “... the assailant.” Though the girl had been a victim –as well as a vessel—of Sraosha.

“Did you know her?” Officer Janecki repeated, patient and persistent.

“No.”

“Ever seen her before?”

“No. Was she from around here?”

“She was. Captain of the volleyball team, just got a scholarship to college. She babysat my kids.”

The evenness of his words hadn’t hidden his anger. “I’m sorry,” Ruth said, and she was, but the girl—the angel—hadn’t given her a choice.

He waited a beat then flipped to a new page. “What did you use to kill her?”

“A piece of glass.”

“You had a knife in your boot. Why didn’t you use that?”

Ruth did not like the tone of this conversation. “She surprised me. I grabbed what I could.”

“You always drive around with broken glass in the front seat of your car?”

“It’s for a friend,” Ruth explained. “He’s an engineer; he likes making stuff.” The cops better not have confiscated that “glass”; she needed it.

“Where does your friend the engineer live?”

“Ohio.”

Officer Janecki looked at his pad again. “How do you know Bobby Singer?”

Ruth hadn’t expected that question, and apparently that showed, because the cop added, “You drive a memorable car, Miss Halston.”

She’d thought that was a good thing, when she first got it.

“So how do you know Bobby Singer?” the cop asked again.

“He’s a friend of my cousins.” She shifted on the bed then hissed at the pain, but it wasn’t too bad. Maybe she could leave tomorrow. She needed to get on the road. “Is my car all right?”

The cop gave her another odd look. “Yeah. It got towed. Have you—”

“Officer Janecki!” called a woman from the doorway. She wore a sheriff’s uniform, and her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Wisps of it stuck out in various ways. Ruth knew all about that annoyance.

Officer Janecki stood. “Sheriff Mills.”

The sheriff glanced at Ruth then beckoned to her cop, who heaved himself up from the chair and joined the sheriff in the hallway, where she told him: “I’ll take over from here.”

“But—”

“It’s a high-profile case, Ed: you know Melissa’s face has been all over the news these last two days as a missing person, and now to have it end this way? The mayor wants me on it. Sorry.”

Officer Janecki looked like he wanted to spit. “Yeah. I guess.”

Ruth didn’t have any moisture in her mouth to spit with. She sure as hell didn’t want to be part of any high-profile case. Or have to pay to get her car fixed and towed.

“So what do you got?” the sheriff asked.

“Something’s off,” he said quietly, but still just barely loud enough for Ruth to hear. “That’s one cold bitch in there. She asked about her car, but not about the girl she knifed to death. That doesn’t seem to bother her at all.”

He was wrong. It did bother Ruth. A lot. But now wasn’t the time to grieve, and she had no reason to feel guilty. It hadn’t been a girl anymore; it had been an angel, and Ruth had only done what was necessary to survive.

She’d keep telling herself that until it was true.

“She didn’t even ask Melissa’s name,” the cop in the hall finished.

Ruth hadn’t wanted to know.

The sheriff came in the room then shut the door. She sat in the same chair that Officer Janecki had used and looked Ruth over with a measuring gaze.

Ruth tried to sit up straighter. It hurt.

“I called Bobby,” Sheriff Mills announced. “He’s on his way. He said you needed those pieces of ‘glass’ for a hunt, so I’ve got most of them in a box for you. The big piece is going into evidence, though. Sorry.”

“Um, thanks,” Ruth said in surprise, taking another look at the sheriff, then asking carefully, “So, you hunt, too?”

Her grin was lopsided, and not happy. “Just bad guys. But Sam and Dean and Bobby helped me out two weeks back with ... another problem. I owe them.”

 A lot of people did. Not many paid. It was a thankless job, mostly, dangerous and dirty, and people didn’t want to know—not really—what you did. What you had to do. Instead, they called you a cold bitch.

“How long have you been a hunter?” the sheriff asked.

“I’m not.”

“Oh, I thought...” She shrugged. “You’ve got the look.”

The look of a killer. “I was in the Marines.”

“Ah.” Her gaze went to the scars on Ruth’s right forearm.

“Iraq.” Ruth didn’t want to explain, and she had other problems now. “Am I going to be charged, ma’am?”

“You got some place to be?”

“I want to go home.” Ruth hadn’t known it until she said it, and she hadn’t expected to tear up at the word, or for her voice to crack.

“To Dayton?”

Once again, Ruth was taken off guard.

“Your driver’s license,” Sheriff Mills explained.

Ruth was sure they’d run her license plates, too, maybe even unpacked her suitcase. She really didn’t like people knowing all about her when she knew nothing of them. “Not Ohio,” Ruth answered. “I’m staying with my parents in Minnesota.” Waiting for Nathan to die. The tears were back. It must be the drugs. “Am I going to be charged, ma’am?” Ruth asked again.

Once again, the sheriff didn’t answer the question. “What was up with the girl?” She leaned forward a little. “The real story.”

“We should wait till Bobby gets here,” Ruth replied. “He can explain.” And he could also vouch for this sheriff, who seemed friendly and helpful, but was a stranger even so.

“Right,” the sheriff said, clipped off and knowing, but she didn’t push after that, and they talked about Ruth’s Corvette (“a sweet ride,” the sheriff called it) and the sheriff’s gun for five minutes until Bobby wheeled through the doorway.

After the greetings and the reassurances and the awkward one-handed hug, the sheriff told Bobby, “She’s not talking to me.”

“It’s OK, Ruth,” Bobby said. “Jody’s good people, and a good friend.”

Good enough for Bobby to use her first name. One of the team. So Ruth gave her report: “The girl was a vessel for an angel named Sraosha who tried to kill me when I said I wouldn’t be its vessel. I killed it first.”

“Those shards came in handy,” Bobby observed and Ruth nodded.

Meanwhile Sheriff Mills was exclaiming, “An ang—?” She leaned back in her chair then looked at Bobby. “You didn’t mention angels.”

He shrugged. “There’s a lot of crap out there. Especially now.”

“So, angels possess people just like demons do?”

“Not quite,” Bobby explained. “Angels are like vampires; they can’t come in unless they’re invited.”

Both of Jody’s eyebrows went up and she leaned even further back. “Uh-huh. So Melissa said yes to this angel two days ago?”

“Most likely,” Bobby confirmed.

“How did it find me?” Ruth needed to know. “I thought those charms put me in stealth mode from them.”

“Angels can’t find you, but they know where I live,” Bobby said. “That angel had probably been watching. And it obviously knew your—”

“—my car,” Ruth finished sourly. She would have to get a rental.

“Was that angel from Michael?” Bobby asked urgently.

“I don’t think so.” Ruth thought back to their conversation. “It said Heaven was ‘complicated’ right now. I think it just wanted to hide.”

“I know the feeling,” muttered Jody.

“Complicated, huh?” Bobby was looking thoughtful.

A middle-aged nurse in scrubs patterned with butterflies appeared at the door, wheeling a cart with a tray of tiny cups. Jody stood to greet her. “Hi, Marjorie.”

“Hello, Jody.” They did the usual chit-chat thing, and then Marjorie said, “I’m afraid I have to ask you to leave. Visiting hours are nearly over, and the patient needs to rest.”

Ruth couldn’t argue with that. Her brain felt fuzzy.

Bobby patted her arm. “I’ll see you later, OK?”

“OK.”

The nurse shooed Bobby and the Sheriff from the room then shut the door. She came over to Ruth and sat down on the bedside chair.

Nurses never sat down. So maybe this wasn’t Marjorie after all, but something else wearing her face. Ruth opened her mouth to yell for Bobby and groped for the call button on the bedside rail, but suddenly she couldn’t talk and she couldn’t move, and the nurse-creature was smiling at her and hadn’t batted an eye. This was definitely downtown shitsville now. Ruth started counting her breathing and tried to keep it nice and slow, not panicky.

“It’s all right, Ruth,” the nurse-creature said.

Ruth just glared at it. This fucking wasn’t all right. She hated not being able to move.

“I am a friend of Castiel,” it said.

That was better than being a demon or a friend of Michael, but Ruth still didn’t like it.

“I can heal you,” the creature offered.

Ruth still didn’t know if she could trust this thing, but she did know she couldn’t stop it from doing whatever it wanted. And she might as well get what she could. She couldn’t nod or blink or say anything, but somehow the angel knew she had agreed, and it reached out. The creature didn’t touch her, just moved its hand palm-down above Ruth’s chest and then up to her head.

And suddenly Ruth felt fine. The buzzing and the headache were gone, nothing was sore, and when she drew a deep breath, the skin on her chest didn’t pull apart. She could move, too, and talk. She got her thumb on the panic button before demanding, “Who are you?”

“A friend,” it repeated. “If you need a name, Marjorie works.”

Ruth shook her head. “That name belongs to somebody else. And so does that body.”

“Yes,” the angel agreed. “And I will return it very soon, and healed of all that ails it.” It motioned to Ruth’s right forearm. “I can heal old hurts, too.”

Full strength and full mobility again? “Yes,” Ruth said right away, but as the hand came toward her she added, “Only, can you leave the scars?”

The hand stopped. “As a badge of honor?”

“As a memorial for others. And a reminder for me.” Plus, she didn’t want to have to explain to Mom and Dad.

The angel touched her this time, just briefly with the fingertips, but warmth flowed along the arm and up into the shoulder, and when Ruth clenched her fist, her hand had power now. She flexed her fingers and rotated her wrist. Everything worked perfectly. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome.”

A gift given required a gift in return. That was the rule. So before she asked about healing Nathan, Ruth offered:  “Can I do something to help you?”

“Later, yes. Today I came to warn you: Michael has ordered that you be killed.”

“Great,” Ruth muttered. “I’ve been angel fatwa-ed. Why now?”

“Because Sraosha tried to use you a vessel, and Michael does not want any other angels to have that chance.”

It was sound military strategy, to keep weapons from the hands of the enemy, and also a classic line from an abuser: If I can’t have you, no one can. “Why isn’t Michael the one trying to kill me?”

“Heaven is complicated now, and he is concerned with other matters.”

Ruth was concerned with this one. She didn’t want to hide at Bobby’s place. She needed to go see Hank, and she wanted to go home. But she’d barely fended off one angel, so if Michael was sending hit-angels after her, she was doomed.

“Castiel gave you a sigil of concealment,” the angel said. “I can give you—and your brother and your parents—a sigil of protection.”

“How about my car?” Ruth joked, but the angel nodded, so Ruth added, still as a joke, “Can you heal it too?”

The angel went still for just a second before announcing, “It is done.”

“Uh... thank you.” Ruth hadn’t expected that. She really owed this angel now. But in for a penny, in for a pound, as her grandmother used to say. “Can you heal Nathan?”

“No.”

Ruth swallowed that bitter answer, not really surprised, and went for option two: “Then I’d like that sigil of protection, for all of us, if you could. And Dean and Sam and Bobby?”

“Your family I can do. The Winchesters and Bobby are beyond my touch.”

Ruth didn't understand that, or why, but she could tell it meant no. When the angel stood, Ruth braced herself for pain, but the angel simply leaned over and kissed her on the brow. Her skin burned where the lips had touched, even though the rest of her felt cool.  “How does it work? What am I protected from?”

“No angel or demon can harm you now. But humans can, and all things of this world.”

Not exactly a get-out-of-jail-free card, but still good to have. “How long does it last?”

“Forever.”

“Wow.” Ruth hadn’t expected that. “Than—”

But the angel was gone, and Ruth’s gratitude never made it into words. But angels listened in other ways, so she prayed, giving thanks and then asking forgiveness, and she prayed for the soul of Melissa and for the family the girl had left behind.

 

* * *

The next morning, Ruth arrived in Ohio and left the broken bits of dagger with Hank, a materials engineer she’d met while working at Sandover Bridge and Iron who would sometimes get poetical about an electron scanning microscope the company owned. So Ruth figured he could help.

He frowned at the shards, but it was a happy, thoughtful frown. “I think I can do what you want,” he told her, squinting as he held a shard up to the light. “I’ll need to do some tests. If it works, it’ll take at least a week. Maybe two.” He was setting up equipment and humming the theme to the Twilight Zone as she left.

Ruth got back to her folks’ house in Minnesota late on Wednesday and went straight to bed. The next morning at breakfast, her mom said, “They’re moving Nathan to an assisted care facility today.” Her smile was determined and cheerful. “He’ll be closer, and it’s not so expensive.”

And the doctors had given up hope. No surprise there. Ruth finished her pancakes then spent the day with her family. “Any more news from that specialist who wanted our genealogy?” her dad asked as they followed the ambulance that was transporting Nathan.

“Not yet,” Ruth said. “He was looking into a similar case in Maine.”

Her dad grunted and said nothing more. That night, Ruth watched a hockey game with Nathan in his new room, narrating it for him since he couldn’t see. On her way home, she had to pull over twice to wipe away tears.

The days went by. Nothing changed. On the last day of March, she called Bobby, who said the Winchester boys were on their way back from a job near Akron. “Anything new?” she asked.

“No.”

Ruth set down the phone and got her gear. “More target practice, honey?” her mom asked as Ruth went through the kitchen toward the back yard. “Archery must be good therapy. Your arm seems almost as good as new.”

“Great therapy,” Ruth agreed. Her arm didn’t need it anymore, but her frustration did. And bows were a lot quieter than guns, so the neighbors didn’t complain. Ruth strapped on her arm guard, leaned her quiver upright against the picnic table, and strung the bow. She nocked the arrow with the turkey feather fletching, and held the bow low, against her leg.

She breathed in, breathed out, and breathed in again, steadying her body and her mind. The air was damp and raw with the ragged edge of winter. The wind was slight. The target was eight paces away. She breathed in and lifted the bow, holding it steady with the right hand and pulling the string back with her left. Swift and smooth and easy, then let the arrow fly. Then another and another and another and another, a full handful to nock and lift and release.

The flight of five arrows flew to the target, the first hitting in the gold near the center and the other four spaced around it in the blue ring. Not equally spaced, though, and not in the innermost ring. Ruth retrieved her arrows and shot again. And again and again and again. She stopped only when it was too dark to see.

They were running out of time.

* * *

_Next Chapter: Gabriel gives his all_

* * *


	4. A Weeping of Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the Elysium Fields hotel, Gabriel girds his loins (metaphorically, since he is wearing boxers (bright red and decorated with dancing flamingos)) for the battle with Lucifer but is undone. The Winchesters decide to start hunting for the Horsemen's Rings, and Ruth takes aim.  
> -Takes place during Episode 5:19 "The Hammer of the Gods"

### April Fool’s Day, 2010 – Elysium Fields

Gabriel hadn’t been invited to the party, but he decided to go anyway. He would come in costume, as befitted Loki the Trickster. No matter that his costume was _being_ Loki the Trickster. At least, it used to be a costume.

After all these centuries, he wasn’t always sure where Loki stopped and Gabriel began. Or rather, “where Gabriel stopped and Loki began” because Loki didn’t stop for much of anything. Or anyone. Angels had to play by different rules.

Which was precisely why Gabriel had left Heaven, with its choirs of seraphim and serried ranks of cherubim, with its sky gloriously aglow with the iridescence of mother-of-pearl, with its eternal whirling stars of ineffable beauty, where everything always happened according to plan.

After all that stultifying perfection, he would have killed for a bit of chaos. In fact, he had.

“But that was long ago and in another country, and besides, the wench is dead,” Gabriel murmured as he stepped out from behind the veil into the lobby of a hotel, which was also in costume for the occasion. Retro chic from half a century before, all gleaming chrome and slick plastic and even a bar called the Astro Lounge. Mercury had been having fun fixing up the place.

Just last night, it had been a mess, an abandoned hotel outside a dying town. This party of the gods was being held in the middle of nowhere, as it had to be. Divinities tended to be nervous about being on someone else’s holy ground, so nowhere was the place to be.

Or not to be.

Or whatever. Gabriel followed the sound of voices toward a pair of closed doors then eavesdropped angel-style. Kali, dominatrix supreme, was dominating the “grand ballroom.” Gabriel smiled. Ah, Kali, with her dark beauty and flashing eyes and her belt of tiny, tinkling skulls. And her many, many hands. Some of which, true, she used to crush men’s skulls like eggs. But that was her nature, and he had always liked strong women. Dangerous women. He hated safe.

Ganesh had a seat at the table in there, along with the Baron Samedi and Odin and Eostre and half a dozen others, including that annoying little sprig of light, Baldur. The Winchesters were there. Of course. Everything was all about them these days.

Kali, no surprise, was urging violence. Angels were violent creatures, and so was she. “This all ends in blood,” she warned, with undeniable accuracy. “It’s them or us.”

Mercury cautiously offered a suggestion: “We haven’t even tried talking with them yet.”

Kali was entertaining no notions from the peanut gallery. She started with blood, setting Mercury to gagging on his.

Gabriel decided it was time to make his entrance. A grand one, of course. He pushed aside the doors (Look, Ma! No hands!) and walked in with all the smarmy enthusiasm of a used car salesman, asking the assorted deities: “Can’t we all just get along?”

With a flick of his fingers, he silenced the startled Winchesters. They talked way too much. And they knew his angel name. But he had to give them some clue, or they’d screw it all up. “Sam! Dean!” he greeted them, still cheerful but giving them a warning glance as he walked past. "It's always ‘wrong place, worst time’ with you muttonheads, huh?"

Then he faced the tableful of gods, who were also startled and (mostly) not pleased. “Loki,” Baldur growled, with all the menace of a beribboned Pekinese, and blathered on for a bit.

Gabriel didn’t listen. The apocalypse was nigh, the Winchester brothers were about to be offered up as swamp bait, and Kali was watching. Gabriel lifted the brothers to another room and calmed things down a bit between Mercury and Kali by reminding everyone: “Talking can always include lies.”

Then he went to talk to the brothers. They were bothered and bewildered, so Gabriel gave them the lay of the land. They were either going to be offered as bait, bribe, or sacrifice, but it didn’t really matter, because Lucifer would turn these gods into chunky finger-paint if they bothered him.

The brothers didn’t like it. “Zap us out of here!” Dean suggested.

“You’re tethered,” Gabriel told them. “Kali has a blood spell on you.”

She had a different kind of spell on him. While the Winchesters went to play the hero and rescue people, Gabriel went to pay his respects to the goddess. He offered her a rose, blood-red.

She took it. And then she took his blood. “You’re bound to me,” she told him. “Now and forever.”

He knew that already. Blood bound them all, from the beginning to the end, and this had started long ago. But, “This cycle is about to end,” she said. “Nothing will survive unchanged.”

Later, when he was trying to convince the gods to give up on killing the devil, she sat on his lap and took his sword. She called him Gabriel in front of everyone. Then she whispered, “I’m sorry,” and stabbed him in the heart.

Gabriel had been expecting that. He put on a light show to convince the gods of his demise then left his decoy body behind and waited in the black Impala for the Winchesters to appear. It took a while; Dean was giving the gods a pep talk about killing Lucifer. Pretty good, actually. Almost inspiring.

Almost.

When Dean came to the car, he kept up the spiel, first trying faithfulness: “These gods are like your family!” then guilt: “We’re going to die without your help.”

They’d die with his help, too. "I can't kill my brother," Gabriel said.

"Can't?” Dean challenged. “Or won't?"

Both, actually. Not unlike Dean himself.

“Thought so,” Dean said with some disgust then left Gabriel sitting in the car, going nowhere.

Gabriel started listening in again, just in time to hear Dean rat him out to the gods. Sneaky little bastard. Gabriel grinned. He liked that in a person.

Then Mercury (another sneaky little bastard) ratted them all out to Lucifer, and big brother came a-winging.

“Damn it all to hell,” Gabriel swore, but he needn’t have bothered. Hell was happening here and now. Lucifer snapped Mercury’s neck, crushed Odin beneath his feet, and splattered the walls with the blood of the Baron and Ganesh. Baldur was next, shredded from the inside.

In the grand ballroom, Kali faced Lucifer, alone and unafraid. With the terrible beauty of a volcano, she lashed out at him with fire. Flames flowed from her heart and streamed from her fingertips, searing the air.

But archangels were seraphim, elemental beings of fire, and Lucifer smiled through it all. Then he knocked Kali to the floor and prepared to crush her to death. She looked up at him, her eyes dazed and glassy.

Gabriel took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. Clearly, this was his cue to play the hero. He girded his loins (metaphorically, since he was wearing boxers (bright red and decorated with dancing flamingos)) and popped into the ballroom. “Guard this with your life,” he hissed to Dean, handing over the brand-new (and very enjoyable) video, then popped sideways a few feet just in time to catch Lucifer off balance. Gabriel got in a good one and slammed his older brother across the room and through the doors.

Damn, that felt good. “Lucy, I’m home!” Gabriel announced, pulling out his angel blade. He gave Kali a hand (so to speak) and pulled her to her feet. Not that she needed help, but it was always good to feel her skin against his. She pressed against him briefly in farewell, and her eyes were as dark and deep as Heaven’s well. Soon, those eyes promised.

Yet first this must be.

Gabriel shuddered. He wasn’t used to the clammy touch of fear. He wasn’t used to dread. But he had agreed with her earlier, this must be.

“Guys!” Gabriel called to Sam and Dean, knowing they would respond like the heroes they were. “Get her out of here!” he said, even as he looked at Kali and thought: Get them out of here!

Her last flashing glance was her promise, and then she and the boys were gone. Gabriel faced Lucifer alone, blade in hand. That fear was icy now.

Yet this must be.

* * *

 

Sam and Dean hurried Kali out of the hotel, but she balked at the parking lot. “I’m not getting in that thing,” she declared when she saw the Impala, black and gleaming under the lights.

“Just get in the car, Princess,” Dean ordered, trying not to growl, and as soon as she got in the back seat they slammed the doors and took off into the darkness. The highway in front of them was straight and flat and empty, and Dean pressed the accelerator down. His baby purred in eager response and the miles fell away.

They were doing eighty-five when Sam asked, “Do you think Gabriel—”

“He’ll be fine,” Dean said, hoping that was true. “He’s always got a plan.”

“But maybe—,” Sam started.

“He has a plan,” Kali interrupted from the back seat.

“See?” Dean asked. “Gabriel’s got a plan. And so do we: get the hell out of Dodge.” And watch the video Gabriel had given to him, but Dean didn’t want to mention it in front of Miss Divinity.

“The hotel was in a place you call Muncie,” Kali said. “Not Dodge.”

Dean felt like banging his head on the steering wheel. Yet another heavenly being who took everything literally and so didn’t get anything. Though Castiel had been getting better at figuring out the “nonsensical human lies”, as he called them.

Was getting better, Dean corrected himself. Not “had been”. Was. Just because they hadn’t seen or heard from Castiel for twelve days didn’t mean he wasn’t ok. Castiel probably had a plan, too. Just like Gabriel. They had to have plans.

A road sign flashed past them, white letters marching across green. Dean focused too late to read it.

“We’re going south on highway 69 again,” Sam told him.

Somehow, the name of the highway wasn’t as funny as it had been earlier that evening. Dean just nodded.

“Where are you going?” Kali asked next.

“Away from here,” Dean muttered.

“Maybe Dodge,” Sam suggested, trying for a joke, and then the world tilted and disappeared.

“Shit!” Dean snarled as another road sign zipped past, because now they were going north on Highway 283, and Dodge City was only five miles away, which meant Muncie was something like a thousand miles to the east. And their passenger was gone.

“Well, Toto,” Sam said after a moment, “I don’t think we’re in Indiana anymore.”

* * *

 

Kali set the Winchesters on another road then went back to the hotel. Eostre was waiting outside, green and gold and lovely. “Sister,” they named each other, reaching out eagerly, discarding the garments they wore. Their fingers intertwined, and lips pressed against lips, thigh against thigh, breast against breast. Black and golden tresses flowed over dark skin and pale skin alike. They shared the breath of death and the breath of life, these two goddesses made of fire and water and earth and air, merging and mingling until there was only the one Goddess, the Mother, she of nine million names.

In the hall of heroes, the angels still fought, though death was near. The Mother watched with silent patience and knowing dread, for this must come to be.

“I know where your heart truly lies,” Lucifer said to his brother, then slid the blade up into Gabriel’s chest, slicing through muscle and tissue and bone. Gabriel gagged and choked on pain, no longer able to breathe. The Mother stayed with him, feeling what he felt, dying as he died. She owed him that. She had brought him to this path.

“Don’t forget,” Lucifer said softly, almost gently, “you learned all your tricks from me, little brother."

Lucifer twisted the blade, cutting apart the skeins that bound an angel’s grace to its vessel, shredding the bond of blood. Gabriel was screaming now, his eyeballs boiling, his tongue broiling. Wing bones charred and shattered as his feathers smoked to ash and dust, for this death was real.

The Mother died with him, living that agony, going with him into the darkness and pain. The young woman named Ruth, caught in the dreamworld and bound to Gabriel by blood, shared in his death and wept in her sleep, her nails digging deep into her palms. She woke in terror, shaking, blood on her hands.

The Mother came once again into the light, with skin dark as space and hair the deep rich gold of the heart of an egg. The palms of her hands and the soles of her feet were dyed red. Stars were beneath her feet and about her head, and she was clothed in all the hidden colors of the rain. She spread her cloak wide, an arc across the sky, gathering the silver gossamer cloud of grace that had once been Gabriel, and she took it with her to the heavenly realm.

There she took a silver rod and slid one end into the center of a heavy disk, embossed with a golden moon on one side and a silver sun upon the other. Reaching up with one hand to gather grace from the air, she gave the rod a twirl, and spun the silver thread anew. Swift and rippling, like water from a jar, the thread flowed from between her fingers, and she coiled it about the silver rod.

And when the thread was long enough, she unwound it from the spindle, a heavy skein pulled taut between her outstretched hands. She took it to the fire of a star and then she started to move. With song and dance and the movement of her hands, she wove a being of light, a seraph of fire and grace, an angel of the Lady.

When the work was done, she brought the seraph to the orchard of Heaven and laid two fingers upon the angel’s brow. “Gabriel,” she called, summoning by name.

The angel woke and knelt before her, all six wings spread wide, then looked up, tiny flames dancing with humor and joy. “The plan worked?”

“It worked,” she agreed. “Lucifer—and Michael and Raphael—all believe you died.”

The angel shuddered as it stood, a thousand silver eyes going grey. “I did.” Then the merriness returned. “But Lucifer’s been away a long time. I didn’t learn _all_ my tricks from him.” A brief flutter of wings shivered the leaves on the trees. “Or from you.”

Suddenly Gabriel stretched and spun, catching the air, flying above the trees, and she grew wings and joined him, laughing. They soared above Heaven’s golden fountain then flew, wingtip to wingtip, in a bright and endless sky.

Finally, they landed, standing upon a mountaintop of ice. Gabriel was serious now, looking down to the planet of white and blue. “I’ll miss it.”

She did not disagree, for she was Kali now, with hair of night and lips of blood, and the ending of things was her domain. “This cycle is nearly over,” she reminded Gabriel. “Destruction must come.”

The silver eyes stayed fixed on the planet below. “And my brothers?”

She shook her head, slowly, and the chain of tiny skulls she wore chimed with the weeping of stars.

* * *

### Friday, 2 April 2010 – Sioux Falls

With Ruth and Sam and Dean all visiting, Bobby opened an extra can of tomato soup for dinner. Nobody seemed very hungry.

“So Gabriel’s really dead,” Bobby said, breaking a cracker into four little squares. He shook his head as he dusted the crumbs from his palms. “Seems like a Trickster who dies on April’s Fool’s Day is just playing one more trick.”

Dean shrugged. “We saw his ‘last will and video’.”

“And I saw him die,” Ruth said. Her palms still stung with pain. She’d woken up freaking out, because this dream had been a lot worse than the others. She’d _felt_ that sword in her heart. She’d heard her own eyeballs sizzle and pop. So she’d driven to Bobby’s looking for answers, and then the Winchesters had arrived with the story of a road trip from hell. Archangels must die harder than normal angels. But maybe if she was awake when Lucifer and Michael died, it wouldn’t hurt.

“Kali said Gabriel had a plan,” Sam said. “I never thought his plan would be to…”

“He did tell us how to put Lucifer back in his cage,” Dean said. “So, now we have a plan: get the other two Horsemen’s rings.”

“That’s a goal,” Ruth pointed out. “What’s your plan?”

“Find Pestilence,” Dean said.

That was still a goal, not a plan, but Ruth didn’t say anything this time. Bobby had said Dean liked to make things up as he went along. Eli had been the same. “Hey, this Sunday’s Easter,” Ruth said suddenly. “Would you all like to come to my folks’ house? For a meet-the-long-lost-family dinner? You, too, Bobby.”

“Uh…”

That was Dean. Sam didn’t look any more excited, and Bobby had the frozen stare of an armadillo in the headlights. “No big deal,” she said, backpedaling both her invitation and her sudden burst of family feeling, wishing she hadn’t said anything. “Just food.”

“Thanks, but … we ought to get started on finding Pestilence,” Sam said.

“Sure,” Ruth agreed.

“We’re not real big on church holidays,” Dean explained.

“Me, neither,” Bobby added.

“That’s fine,” Ruth said, and really, it was. She knew they thought her going to Mass every day was weird. They may all have been blood-kin, but they weren’t really family. She shouldn’t have said anything.

So the next morning she said goodbye and she went back home. Her package from Ohio arrived on Saturday afternoon, along with about five pages from Hank that had drawings and words like “metallic glass amorphous structure” and “electron valence shells.” High school chemistry had been a long time ago. Ruth set the letter aside and got out her archery gear.

“Those are pretty arrows,” Mom said as Ruth walked through the kitchen. “Are they new?”

“Yes, Hank made them for me,” Ruth explained. Out of the shards of an angel’s blade. She also had a throwing knife, a dagger, and some darts. She cut her finger on the arrowhead, they were that sharp, and they flew straight and true, singing through the air.

Dean had been right. She wasn’t fast enough or strong enough to kill an angel up close and personal, but maybe she could kill one from far away. It was time.

Six weeks since Michael had taken Nathan and dropped him, all of Lent. Now it was spring again. On Sunday morning, Ruth put on a dress for the first time in ages and went to Mass with her mom and dad. The church was laden with flowers on Easter morn.

“The body of Christ,” the priest intoned.

“Amen,” Ruth replied, holding out her hands to receive Holy Communion.

The cup was offered next, and her hands trembled a little as she took it. She knew now why she felt stronger after daily Mass, why Castiel had said her soul shone. She wasn’t drinking demon blood or angel blood. She didn’t need a donor.

She had a savior.

“Amen,” Ruth said, and drank deeply of the blood of Christ.

* * *

_Next Chapter: The return of Castiel._


	5. Cut the Cord

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel had sometimes wondered what it was like to cry. He had never thought it would hurt so much on the inside.

Castiel had long ago lost track of time. There was light, and there was darkness. There was heat, and there was cold. There was hunger and thirst and weariness. Rarely—blessedly—there was sleep. But mostly, there was pain.

Agonizing, brutal, exhausting pain.

Angels could be inventive. And curious. Orifiel, one of Zachariah’s hounds, liked to remove internal organs one at a time, then put them back and heal the vessel before trying again. Jamareah seemed fascinated with peeling off fingernails. Zuphlas liked fire, and eyes. Sraosha could spend an hour sharpening a blade.

Usually they took separate turns, but sometimes they worked in pairs, and once, early on, all four had joined in. “There’s a human game named soccer,” Zuphlas had said to the others. “The outcast’s vessel could be the ball.” They’d trussed him tightly, with knees to chest and hands below ankles, then begun to play. The first kick had broken three ribs. The last that he remembered had shattered his skull. Castiel didn’t know who had won the game.

They healed his vessel enough to wake him; then they hung him from a hook and left him to dangle. For days.

Pain, Castiel discovered during that ordeal , traveled in different ways. Sometimes it came in waves of heat or cold, washing over you and leaving you gasping for air. Sometimes it bubbled through you, little sparks of heat here and there, before exploding and ripping you open from the inside. Sometimes it sliced its way along your veins, pulsing with every heartbeat, burrowing deeper with every gasp, until you didn’t want to breathe.

Castiel couldn’t count how often his vessel had died. It didn’t matter. They just healed it and started again.

Recently, Orifiel had removed the digestive system. The results weren’t nearly as dramatic or immediate as removing lungs, and Orifiel, despite angelic patience, seemed disappointed. Castiel closed his eyes and refused to think of food or, worse, of water.

An eternity later, when Castiel’s lips were cracked and his eyelids scraped rather than soothed, Jamareah arrived and announced, “We have been summoned.”

Orifiel’s wings twitched in annoyance. “I was almost done.”

Which, Castiel knew, meant he was almost dead. He had been ready to die for a while, but the vessel was stubborn.

Jamareah’s wings swept up then down, and Castiel shuddered as the wave of cold air clawed across his naked skin. “We have been summoned,” Jamareah repeated, in a voice as cold as that wind. “Finish this.”

Yes, Castiel thought. Finish it. Maybe he could finally, truly die. Maybe they would kill the vessel and leave it to rot. Maybe he could finally let go.

But Orifiel repaired Castiel’s vessel, erasing pain and thirst. It wasn’t over yet. Castiel was still tired, so he kept his eyes closed and didn’t move. Maybe they would let him sleep. Instead, they talked in low tones.

“Has Zuphlas returned?” Orifiel sounded worried. “Or Sraosha?”

“No.”

In his brief periods of lucidness, Castiel had wondered why he had only two tormentors instead of all four. He couldn’t see the angels, but he could hear, and Jamareah’s voice had held dread.

“We should have reported their disappearance to Michael,” Orifiel fretted. “Immediately.”

“You said we should not interrupt Michael unnecessarily.”

“I thought they would return.”

“To endure discipline?” Jamareah asked skeptically. “As we shall.” The dread had returned, but obedience bound the angel into resigned hopelessness.

Castiel had escaped from the prison of obedience by his own free will. Most angels never dared to touch the key. They were the real prisoners, not he.

But he was still tied and helpless. Jamareah picked him up by the ankle, saying, “Our orders are to drop this on Earth somewhere,” and then they were soaring, Castiel hanging head down. The cold air pinched and bit. Castiel opened his eyes a mere slit. Below them lay a sea of wrinkled blue.

“The time has come?” Orifiel asked, sounding eager.

“Soon,” Jamareah answered. “Michael’s vessel has said yes.” Then Jamareah let go.

As Castiel was falling, head first toward the sea, he realized that pain did not have to come from the body. Anguish and hopelessness came from the soul.

He had truly lost everything now. Dean had given in.

 

* * *

 

More time passed, a haze of flickering lights and jabbering voices that swelled and disappeared, urgently asking questions Castiel did not understand, demanding answers he could not give.

“I do not know,” he tried to say, but he had no tongue.

Pain came again, breaking against him like waves upon a shore, dragging him out farther and deeper, leaving him gasping and drowning in agony. He could not swim. He had feet and hands but no legs or arms. Orifiel hadn’t put him back together right.

Castiel sank deeper, helpless, with little feeble motions like the wriggling of grubs.

“What is your name?” the jabbering voices asked, first on this side, then the other.

He had no name. He had no voice. Those had been taken, too. “Don’t step on the ants,” he wanted to tell them, for it was important—ants were important—but the voices jabbered on, high and petulant, and Castiel sank deeper, and the voices went away.

Later, the lights flickered blue. Deep clanging bells, unceasing and inexorable. He counted: twenty-three hundred and fifty-eight.

The voice came again, female in tone. “Who are you?”

He was outcast. He was no one. He was nothing. He did not exist.

“Who do you serve?”

Castiel had no answer. He had been cast out, and was an angel of the Lord no more. Angels could not serve man.

“What do you want?”

No one asked an angel that. Angels obeyed. Though once, in a grove of mighty trees, as he walked with Uriel through thickly growing ferns, Uriel had declared he wanted to kill.

And a century ago, on the rampart of the garrison, he had stood with Anna. “Have you ever wondered,” Anna had asked, “what it would be like to choose?”

“No,” Castiel had answered with the purity and honesty of the innocent, of the ignorant, and thought of it no more. Not until Anna stripped out her own grace and leapt from Heaven of her own free will.

“What do you choose?” and now the voice sounded like Anna, close by.

He had chosen to disobey. He had chosen to help Dean and Sam. He had chosen his own path. Castiel answered, finding his voice at last: “Freedom.”

 

* * *

 

 

He was rising, empty and weightless. He was floating, numb and disconnected. Hands and feet. Arms and legs. He could not move them. He could not feel them. Maybe they were gone.

He did have a tongue. That he could move, a little. His mouth felt as if it were stuffed with the cotton balls he had once discovered in a bathroom and wondered if they were food. His eyelids were stuck together, but the darkness had golden areas, and he could turn his head to the light. Cool wetness touched his forehead, his cheek, his lips, his chin. The hands were gentle. The place was warm.

Castiel slept.

He woke in a plain white room. Tubes were in his nose. Needles were in his arms. His vessel did have arms, and legs and hands and feet. Even all the fingers and toes were there. That was good. A woman in loose pink clothing looked at him with surprise, and then there were many people talking and much poking and prodding. Castiel slept when he could.

When he woke again, he was in a yellow room with windows, and the tubes and needles were gone. A TV stared at him from the corner with a grey lidless eye. Later, a woman with silver hair came into the room without knocking and sat on a chair next to the bed. Her clothes were light green. She seemed friendly, but her smile did not reach her eyes. Castiel could not sense anything of her soul. He could not see any colors about her or feel her mood or reach her mind.

He was deaf and dumb and blind. “Go live with humans,” Michael had said. Go be one. Now Castiel was on Earth in a human vessel—powerless, hungry, and in pain. The apocalypse was coming, because Dean had given in.

Castiel was not surprised, and he was not angry with Dean, not anymore. Dean had been broken by exquisitely placed blows. Death and guilt, honor and shame, despair and heroism, sheer bloody stupid stubbornness … Zachariah had twisted all of those into a rope and wound them around Dean, pulling tighter and tighter, until Dean put the noose around his own neck and handed the end to Michael.

Castiel could understand that. He himself had been ready to die not long before. But Sam had believed that his older brother would resist, and that thought—that shred of hope—had been all Castiel had to hold onto in the haze of endless pain.

But that hope was gone, and so was Dean. If Castiel ever saw Dean again, Michael would be looking out from those green eyes. Michael would be the one to smile. And even if Michael abandoned the vessel, Dean would never again watch a woman, never tell one of his incomprehensible jokes, never lavish love on his car. Dean was gone.

Castiel’s eyes began to sting, and he blinked to try to soothe them. Droplets of moisture slowly rolled down his temples and into his hair. Odd, the room did not feel hot enough to cause his vessel to sweat.

“Can you tell me your name?” the woman sitting next to his bed asked.

Michael had taken Castiel’s grace and Michael had banished him from Heaven, but Michael could not take his name.

“I am Castiel.”

* * *

 

A day and a night passed, and the poking and prodding happened several more times. Castiel sometimes wondered if he should call Sam or maybe Bobby, but then that thought would float away. He slept a great deal. His cheek was tender and he had a cut above one eye. His ribs were sore, and his thigh had a jagged gash down the outside.

“You landed hard,” explained a nurse as he prepared a needle. His nametag read Jocko. “On a shrimp boat in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. We think maybe you got pushed out of a plane?”

Castiel just looked at him blankly. He had found that handled most situations with humans, and it worked again.

“No memories. Right.” Jocko put on the fake cheerful face all the nurses wore. “Roll over,” he said, and Castiel painfully turned to one side. “It’s a miracle you survived,” Jocko said as the needle went into the left buttock.

No miracle. Michael wanted him alive, to be a witness to the end. Castiel’s eyes were watering again. This time he recognized them as tears. He had sometimes wondered what it was like to cry. He had never thought it would hurt so much on the inside.

A different nurse came the next day, a woman this time. Her clothing was blue with little rainbows, and her nametag said Maria. She shut the door and drew the curtain around the bed. Castiel sighed and prepared himself to be prodded again.

But Maria simply looked at him then said, “You should call him.”

His blank look of incomprehension came all on its own. “Who?”

“Dean Winchester.” She smiled a little as she said the name.

Castiel went very still, peering at her for demon sign and wishing frantically he could sense the essence of beings. Bodies only disguised. This body had brown eyes and brown skin, and its hair was black and long, held in place by a red butterfly clip at the back of the head. Castiel smelled nothing odd, but that meant little. He’d never bothered much with the vessel’s sense of smell before.

“Deus,” he proclaimed, for the name of God could reveal a demon, but the other being smiled and repeated the word in Enochian, the language of Heaven. “What are you?” he demanded.

“A messenger.”

Angels were messengers of the Lord. He did not recognize this vessel and he could not taste its essence. “Who are you?”

“Maria will work,” she said with a glance at her name tag.

Castiel did not pursue it. Names could be dangerous to know. “Dean Winchester is … gone,” he told her, and his eyes were stinging again. “Michael—”

“Michael’s vessel is Adam,” she interrupted. “Dean said no.”

“Dean said no,” Castiel repeated slowly, tasting the truth of those words. The tears still came, but they did not hurt now. Instead, he felt … light. Good. Full of joy. He had not known humans could experience that bliss. “Dean said no,” he said to himself, savoring the relief.

“Just before he killed Zachariah.”

“He killed—” Castiel stopped short then laughed aloud. Laughter felt good, too, even if it did hurt his ribs. His cheek hurt, too, from the smiling. Castiel did not care. Dean was alive and definitely kicking. “Zachariah must have been … outraged.” Dean would probably say “mortally offended” and then start laughing at his own joke. “When?” Castiel asked, because now it mattered what day it was.

“Twenty-seven days ago.”

His time with the four angels had seemed longer. “Yes,” Castiel said. “I will call.”

“I’ll help, if I can,” Maria said then laid two fingers on his brow. Castiel closed his eyes. Her touch was gentle and warm, and heat flowed through him, taking away some of his pain.

“Be careful,” she said, and then she was gone, with a quiet rush of wings. The air tasted of cinnamon and sunshine.

Castiel asked one of the humans for a phone and then pressed the buttons to reach Dean. He answered, sounding surprised and annoyed and relieved all at the same time, and Castiel told Dean of his hospital stay and his condition. Dean asked for details, but Castiel did not oblige. Other things were more important.

“You said ‘no’ to Michael,” Castiel began. “I owe you an apology.”

“Cas, I…” Dean cleared his throat. “It's OK.”

It was not “OK.” Castiel had erred. “You are not the burnt and broken shell of a man that I believed you to be,” Castiel said earnestly, wanting Dean to taste the truth of those words.

After a moment, Dean said, “Thank you.”

The words sounded clipped off and tight, the way Dean sounded when he was trying not to cry.

“I appreciate that,” Dean continued.

Castiel was pleased. He had communicated well, and his apology had been accepted. “You're welcome.”

That afternoon, Castiel left the hospital and managed to find a bus going north. The Winchesters were on their way to Iowa to get the ring of Pestilence, one of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and Castiel was going to help Dean and Sam, in whatever way he could.

Thirty-seven hours later, when Castiel arrived, he knew had been right to come. The brothers needed him. Pestilence had infected them with noxious diseases, and they were in no condition to fight. He infected Castiel’s vessel, too, so that his skin felt clammy and cold, and blood bubbled from his lungs into his mouth.

“Not a speck of angel in you, is there?” Pestilence gloated.

Orifiel had said much the same: apostate, traitor, collaborator … human. Castiel had ignored the angel, and he could ignore the Horseman, too. The illness was trivial; Castiel was no stranger to pain. He bent forward as if in anguish, but then kept moving forward, picking up the knife from the floor and rushing at Pestilence, immobilizing the hand with a harsh grip and sawing through the finger joint just below the ring. Blood spurted as Pestilence howled in pain.

Castiel felt a smile blossom within. “Maybe just a speck.”

 

* * *

 

“The plan is from Gabriel,” Dean explained as he drove them back to Bobby’s house. Castiel had the back seat to himself. “Once we get all four rings of the Horsemen,” Dean continued, “we can use them like a key and lock Lucifer back in his cage.”

“If he is in it,” Castiel pointed out.

“Yeah,” Sam muttered. “If.”

Castiel looked out the car window at the empty fields of damp, bare earth. On the bus ride from Louisiana, the earth had been tinged with the green of spring, but here in Iowa the earth was still brown. Getting Lucifer in the cage would not be easy, but it was a plan with possibilities.

Including revenge.

* * *

 

_This story is continued in "Lift the Veil"_

 


End file.
